A Database and Web Application Based on MVC Architecture

Diana M. Selfa, Maya Carrillo, Ma. del Roco Boone

Facultad de Ciencias de la Computacin
Benemrita Universidad Autnoma de Puebla
14 Sur y Av.San Claudio, Edif. 135, Ciudad Universitaria
dselfa@hotmail.com, mayacar@siu.buap.mx, rboone@cs.buap.mx

Abstract problem model is considerably far form the solution

MVC architecture has had wide acceptance for
corporation software development. It plans to divide
the system in three different layers that are in charge
of interface control logic and data access, this
facilitates the maintenance and evolution of systems
according to the independence of the present classes in
each layer. With the purpose of illustrating a
successful application built under MVC, in this work
we introduce different phases of analysis, design and
implementation of a database and web application
using UML. As central component of the application, it
has a database made up by fifteen relations and a user
interface supported by seventeen web pages.
Key words: MVC architecture, database systems,
analysis and system design.
1. Introduction
In software development the modeling and the
standardized notations allow to express complex ideas
in a precise way, facilitating the communication among
the project participants that generally have different
technical and cultural knowledge.
A notation should have a good defined semantics
and should be dominated by the participants so that it
facilitates the communication. The established
standards allow overcoming bad interpretations and
ambiguity [1].
Systems analysis and design produce models built
by means of diagrams that use a specific notacin.
UML is mainly a graphic language to represent the
concepts that are needed in the development of an
object-oriented information system.
Models help to understand and to represent the
problem that is solved, as well as the problem solution.
Different approaches exist to model a problem and to
express the system requirements and restrictions. If the
model effort will be invested in trying to transfer the
problem representation from a users understandable
form to a designers and developers understandable one.
This causes misunderstandings and difficulty to
validate the solution with regard to the established
problem [6].
On the other hand a software engineer applies
potential solutions to development problems, monitors
their success or failure and produces more effective
solutions on the next occasion.
Different developers may expend a great deal of
development time and effort on solving these problems
from first principles each time they occur, and the
solution that each produce may not be the most
appropriate that could be achieved. Patterns provide a
means for capturing knowledge about successful
solutions in the software development.
One of these patterns is Model View Controller
(MVC) architecture initially introduced for user
interfaces in application implemented with the
programming language Smalltalk. In this approach the
system is divided in three components: model that
express the domain knowledge, view that present the
user interface, and control that manage the updates to
views.
MVC has demonstrated its benefits for interactive
applications allowing multiple representations of the
same information, promoting the code reutilizacin,
and helping developers to concentrate on a single
application aspect. [2]
It is common that information systems should be
tailored to different user needs according to their role.
This means that if several users need to access assets
information it is probable that a person in charge of
inventory needs to see the amount of equipments, their
distribution and who preserves them. However the
responsible for budget needs to know how much it has
been spent year to date in the acquisition of new assets.
This situation is translated in having different views for

Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP 2006)
0-7695-2505-9/06 $20.00 2006 IEEE

Controller
User
Model
View
Figure 1. MVC Architecture
the same information that will be shown according to
the user. If a view is updated, the results of this update
should be reflected in the remaining views. To think
about having an architecture based on subsystems like
for example equipment subsystem, locations
subsystem, budget subsystem can be expensive since
several elements can be duplicated, making the
software more complex and prone to errors. The
system maintenance also gets complicated so that any
change in the functionality of the system has to be
changed in the subsystems interfaces. So the problems
to be resolved are:
1. The same information should be shown in
different formats in different views
2. Changes in a view should be reflected in the
remaining ones
3. Changes in the user interface should be easy to
make
4. The central functionality of the system should be
independent of the interface to allow that multiple
interfaces coexist [1]
The MVC architecture solves the mentioned points
separating the system functionality from the system
interface and it incorporates a mechanism for
propagating the changes to the remaining systems
views. Then their advantages with relationship to other
architectures are:
1. Less coupling
2. Higher cohesion
3. The views provide bigger flexibility and agility:
multiple model views can be created, to add, to
modify, and to eliminate new views dynamically, you
can nest views, you can change the way in which a
view responds to the user without changing its visual
representation, to synchronize the views, to have views
for different devices according to their capacities, a
view for Web and another for windows applications
4. More design clarity
5. It facilitates the maintenance
6. Bigger scalability [5, 10]
The analysis of robustness introduced by Ivar
Jacobson [7] can be easily moved to MVC architecture.
Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP 2006)
0-7695-2505-9/06 $20.00 2006 IEEE
In this approach the text of the use cases is used to
identify the participant objects and they are classified
according to the role that they play in the use case.
This classification locates the objects in a natural way
inside the components of MVC. Ivar classifies the
objects in:
1. Entity objects: objects with long life times related
with persistent data, they can be databases tables, files,
and cache or session data (MVC model)
2. Boundary objects: objects that communicate to
the system with their environment, they can be screens,
windows, menus, or any graphic interface element
(MVC view)
3. Control objects: objects that carry out the use
case actions are used to filter out the data to be
presented to the user (MVC control)
This analysis imposes the following rules:
1. Actors can only talk to boundary objects.
2. Boundary object can only talk to controllers and
actors
3. Entity objects can only talk to controllers
4. Controllers can talk to boundary objects and
entity objects, and to others controllers, but not to
actors [11].
In this work, we present like case study a database
and Web application (SAF) to control the assets
information owned by an educational institution. Its
modeling was made using UML (Unified Modeling
Language), it was used analysis of robustness and
MVC architecture.
In this paper we present MVC architecture. Section
three describes SAF specification aspects. Sections
four, five, and six describe SAF view, control, and
model components respectively. Conclusions and
perspectives of this work are in the last section.
2. MVC
The Model View Controller (MVC) paradigm was
first designed for user interfaces in applications
implemented with Smalltalk, but from then it has
become a design paradigm for user interfaces without
caring the implementation language and for web
applications whose control components frequently
change.
MVC architecture is illustrated in Figure 1, it divides
the interactive system in three components each one
specialized in a task. The model contains the
application data and manages the core functionality.
The view manages the visual display of the model and
the feedback to the user. The controller interprets the
mouse and keyboard inputs from the user,
commanding the model and the view to change
appropriately [3].

Validate Access
Manage Assets Information
Responsible
for Inventory
Manage System Catalogs
Generate Reports
Figure 2. SAF main use cases
The pattern may be passive, which means that it
does not know about the existence of the view or the
controller. For example if the model is a text that can
only be changed by the user. However in most of the
cases the model must have a link to the view to inform
it on changes made to its state caused by internal
procedures. The view and the controller are always
connected. The controller communicates with the view
to determine which objects are being manipulated by
the user and to call model methods to make changes on
these objects. The model carries out the changes and it
notifies the view to update.
The application view generally includes several
nested MVC views. The controllers of these views
should cooperate to assure that the appropriate control
is interpreting the user entrance. For this purpose they
form a hierarchical tree where the messages pass from
controller to controller through the branches of the tree.
Only the controller that has the focus takes an action.
Each view is associated with a unique controller and
vice versa, but the model can have at the same time
more than one view-controller pair. Every time that the
model changes each dependent view must be notified
so that they change accordingly. The possibility to
have multiple synchronized views is a significant
benefit of the MVC architecture [4].
3. SAF
We present the case study SAF an application to
manage assets information for illustrating the use of
the MVC architecture.
UML was used as modeling language, since it has
become an industry standard, we use it to carry out the
models of the system.
Trying to diminish the breach between the problem
model and the solution model use cases were used for
eliciting SAF requirements. Figure 2 shows the main
use cases: 1. Validate access requests user and
Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP 2006)
0-7695-2505-9/06 $20.00 2006 IEEE
password to enter the system, 2. Manage assets
information administers assets information, 3. Manage
system catalogs administers information related to the
assets: accounts, people responsible for assets,
locations, assets classes, assets types, assets models,
organizations among other, and 4. Generate reports
presents reports by classification, location, asset type,
people in charge of assets, serial number, inventory
label and accounts as well as combinations of the
listing attributes.
Once defined the use cases in detail we use the
robustness analysis introduced by Ivar Jacobson [7].
Robustness analysis rules were applied in SAF
analysis and design. Figure 3 shows a simplified
diagram for Delete Account use case related to Manage
System Catalogs by a relation << uses >>. The view is
represented by an HTML page named Cuentas. When
the user selects the delete option of the datagrid
(grdCuentas) on the HTML page to eliminate an
element a message is sent to PrvControl who sends the
message prvBorrar to MdPrincipal. This last one send
the message execute to the control SqlClient that is the
.NET framework Data provider [13] who by means of
SAF_SP_CUENTA stored procedure erases the
selected element.
Starting from the robustness diagrams classes,
sequence, collaboration and states diagrams were built.
SAF was implemented in ASP.NET [8] that is coupled
to the MVC paradigm separating the interface (view)
in a natural way in file * .aspx and code behind page
(control) in files * .aspx.yy, where yy depends on the
programming language, in our case it was Visual Basic
.NET. SQL Server 2000 was used as relational
database [13, 14] and Crystal Report to generate
reports. The main functions of the system are:
grdCuentas_
DeleteCommand
Cuentas
PrvControl
MdPrincipal
SqlCliente
Figure 3. Conceptual robustness diagram for
Delete Account use case

SQL
Server
Database Server
Web Clients
Internet Information Server (IIS)
Figure 4. SAF Distribution
1. Validate access, 2. Manage catalogs: assets type,
accounts, classifications, locations, organizations,
measure units, principals, people in charge of assets,
acquisition types, marks, models, conservation states
and users. 3. Manage assets 4. Generate reports, and 5.
Maintain assets historical.
Figure 4 shows SAF distribution: an ASP pages
server, a database server, and clients that will be able
to use the application according to their authorization
level using a browser.
4. View
layer with SAF_SP_CUENTA a stored procedure as
parameter.
Private Sub prvBorrar()
If Me.grdCuentas.SelectedIndex <> -1 Then
Me.txtClave.Text =
Me.grdCuentas.SelectedItem.Cells(1).Text
Me.txtCuenta.Text =
Me.grdCuentas.SelectedItem.Cells(2).Text
If Ejecuta("SAF_SP_CUENTA 3, " &
Me.grdCuentas.SelectedItem.Cells(0).Text & "," &
Me.txtClave.Text & ", '" &
UCase(Me.txtCuenta.Text) & "'") Then
prvEstadoInicial()
Else
Me.lblResultados.Text = "Ha ocurrido un error al
intentar
End If
End If
End Sub
5. Model
In the model we find the class MdPrincipla with 3
main methods: ejecuta, consulta, and insertaConClave
and 17 stored procedures. Next the ejecuta method
code is shown. Ejecuta method was called by the
Control using the prvBorrar method. It can be observed
that until this layer the application makes use of
specific classes to communicate with the selected
database.

The system interface consists of 17 web pages 13 of Public Function Ejecuta(ByVal vsInstruccion As String) As
them for catalogs administration. They allow Boolean
homogenizing the assets information. Figure 5 shows If gnNivelUsuario > 0 Then
Try
the page for administering account catalog. In each line
goConeccion = New SqlClient.SqlConnection("DATA
of a datagrid you can see the registered accounts if X is SOURCE=localhost;initial
selected the element of the line is deleted. If E is catalog=saf;uid=saf;pwd=userSAF;")
selected the key account and the description account goConeccion.Open()
are placed in the corresponding text box and you are goComando = New
allowed to modify them. If the new button is pressed SqlClient.SqlCommand(vsInstruccion, goConeccion)
the text boxes of key account and description account goComando.ExecuteNonQuery()
are activated to be edited with information of a new Ejecuta = True
account. This information is save to the database when Catch e As System.Exception
Return False
the accept button is pressed.
Finally
goComando = Nothing
5. Control goConeccion.Close()
End Try 'de Try
Controls are constituted by the * .aspx.vb files one Else
for each web pages developed, in them there are 12 Return False
methods on average that contain the logic for event End If
End Function
handling and an additional control to communicate
with the model and to returns data to page control. Like
As it was previously mentioned in SQL Server 2000
example part of the PrvControl class code is shown.
17 store procedures were created to add, to update, to
This code allows eliminating a catalog account. It can
delete, and to search on the database tables. The store
be observed the call to the ejectua method of the model

Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP 2006)
0-7695-2505-9/06 $20.00 2006 IEEE
 to have a historical registration for people in charge of
an asset and asset characteristics at the assignment
moment. To implement this requirement it was only
necessary to modify the model and the view of the
application. A trigger associated to SAFDBIEN assets
table was added in the model to validate the moment
when the person responsible of the asset, asset
characteristics or asset state is updated to insert a new
record into SAFDHIST historical table. Trigger code to
insert a record into SAFDHIST when the asset
characteristics are changed is shown:

CREATE TRIGGER SAF_TG_HISTORIAL ON

dbo.SAFDBIEN
AFTER UPDATE
AS
Figure 5. SAF interface IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INSERTED
JOIN DELETED ON INSERTED.DSCARAC <>
DELETED.DSCARAC)
procedure SAF_SP_CUENTA operates on the
INSERT INTO SAFDHIST
SAFCCUENTA table. It can be stood out that until this SELECT INS.PNCLAVE, 1,
level a specific SQL syntax is used. INS.DSCARAC, INS.FNRESP,
GETDATE(), INS.FNUSUARIO,
CREATE PROCEDURE SAF_SP_CUENTA INS.FNEDO
@VNOPCION TINYINT, FROM INSERTED INS
@VNCLAVEUNICA INTEGER, JOIN DELETED ON
@VNCLAVE INT, INS.PNCLAVE = DELETED.PNCLAVE
@VSDESCR VARCHAR(20)
AS Similar code was written to insert a record if the
IF (@VNOPCION = 1)
person in charge of the asset or the asset state is
INSERT INTO
SAFCCUENTA(DNCLAVE, DSDESCR) updated. The easiness to implement changes like the
VALUES described has shown the advantages of MVC
(@VNCLAVE, @VSDESCR) architecture.
END To have a better idea about the objects in model
IF (@VNOPCION = 3) BEGIN layer, table 1 shows the system database tables and
DELETE their description.
SAFCCUENTA
WHERE
PNCLAVE = @VNCLAVEUNICA 6. Conclusions
END
Through the development of the application that we
GO have presented in this work, we confirm the advantages
of MVC architecture for database and web application
Some of our experiences when developing this development. It was also evident that the construction
system were that use case diagrams used to specify the of clear and understandable models for the users and
system functionality from the user perspective together software engineers allows the construction of quality
with robustness analysis are a powerful tool to track systems with predictable development times. With
each requirement since its definition up to its regard to the case study presented in this work we will
implementation and tests. The use of programming incorporate new components to allow the capture of
standards to write code reflected in the names of web computer assets in an automatic way to feed and
pages, variables, tables, stored procedures, triggers and update the database, this means that using the network
methods gave as a result an understandable and simple infrastructure computer hardware and software
code. Also the code organization in three layers has characteristics will be captured. These characteristics
allowed other developers quickly understand its will be used to obtain performance and space
structure facilitating the changes implementation. distribution graphics.
During application development we received several
changes from the user; one of them was the possibility

Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP 2006)
0-7695-2505-9/06 $20.00 2006 IEEE
 [15] C. Larman: UML y Patrones: Introduccin al anlisis y
Table 1. SAF database tables diseo orientado a objetos. Prentice-Hall Hispanomericana,
1999.
Table name Description
SAFCCLAS Asset Classification
SAFCCUENTA Accounts
SAFCDIR Principals
SAFCEDO Asset State
SAFCMARCA Brands
SAFCMOD Models
SAFCORG Organizations
SAFCRESP People in charge of assets
SAFCTIPO Asset Type
SAFCTIPOAD Acquisition Type
SAFCUBI Locations
SAFCUNIDAD Departments
SAFCUSU Users
SAFDBIEN Assets
SAFDHIST Asset historical

7. References
[1] Simon Bennett, Steve McRobb, Ray Farmer. Object-
Oriented systems Analysys And design Using UML, Mc
Graw Hill.
[2] Colin Moock, Object-Oriented Development with
ActionScript 2.0, OReilly
[3] S. Burbeck, Applications Programming in Smalltalk-80:
How to use Model-View-Controller (MVC), http://st-
www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/smarch/st-docs/mvc.html,
(1992). Referred 19.11.2002.
[4] Hanna Dobos, Separable User Interfaces and Interaction
Controls, Masters Thesis, University of Jyvskyl,
Department of Mathematical Information Technology, 2002
[5] Len Welicki, Patrones y Antipatrones: una Introduccin
- Parte II, http://www.microsoft.com/spanish/msdn/
comunidad/mtj.net/voices/MTJ_3317.asp
[6] Philippe Kruchten, The Unified Process an Introduction,
Addison Wesley.
[7] Ivar Jacobson, Objet Oriented Software Engineering,
ACM Press.
[8] G.Andrew Duthie. ASP.NET, McGraw-Hill, 2002
[9] J.Rumbaugh, I. Jacobson, G.Booch. El lenguaje
Unificado de Modelado. Manual de Referencia, 2000
[10] C. Larman: UML y Patrones: Introduccin al anlisis y
diseo orientado a objetos. Prentice-Hall Hispanomericana,
1999.
[11] Shams Mukhtar, Applying Robustness Analysis on the
ModelViewController (MVC) Architecture in ASP.NET
Framework, using UML, http://www.codeproject.com/
aspnet/ModelViewController.asp
[12] K. Delaney. Inside SQL Server 2000, Microsoft 2001
[13] R.Dobson. Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2000
with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft 2002.
[14] D. Sceppa. Programming ADO, Microsoft 2000

Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP 2006)
0-7695-2505-9/06 $20.00 2006 IEEE